Two former Parramatta Eels players are accused of harbouring semi-automatic weapons and possessing more than half-a-million dollars in cash after dramatic arrests in Sydney's Centennial Park yesterday.

CSIRO researchers solves 74-year-old World War II mystery

CSIRO researchers have solved a more than 70-year-old maritime mystery after discovering the wreck of SS Macumba off the coast of the Northern Territory.

Footage from RV Investigator’s drop camera located the wreck, which was sunk by a Japanese airstrike during World War II, in the Arafura Sea off the coast of Arnhem Land yesterday.

The Macumba was a merchant ship, made of 2500 tons of steel, which vanished beneath the waves when two Japanese aircraft scored a direct hit on the ship’s engine room in August 1943.

Three Macumba crew were killed in the attack, with one of the bodies never recovered.

“We discovered the wreck in the middle of the night after about 10 hours of searching, which was lucky as we only had a couple more hours available for the search,” Marine National Facility Voyage Manager on Investigator Hugh Barker said.

“It was also really lucky that we had an excellent team on sonar who noticed some unusual features on the seafloor near the edge of our search area and asked for the ship to do an extra wide turn outside the search area. That’s when we found it”.

Information collected Investigator will be used to help inform a detailed wreck inspection report and assist in protecting the site as a historic shipwreck, CSIRO said.

The SS Macumba was sunk by a Japanese air attack during WWII. (War Memorial)